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24-07-2025
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50 fiction books featured on Bookends with Mattea Roach
If you're wondering what to read next this summer, this list of fiction books featured on the first season of CBC Radio's Bookend s with Mattea Roach is a good place to start. On the show, Roach talks to authors from Canada and around the world. Here are all the fiction titles that sparked the conversation this past year. Valid by Chris Bergeron, translated by Natalia Hero Set in Montreal in 2050, Valid is a novel about Christelle, a trans woman who is forced to live as a man to stay alive. At 70-years-old, she's held captive by an AI and sets off on her own revolution — a revelation of her true self. Chris Bergeron is a Montreal writer who currently works at Cossette, a global marketing agency. She previously ran the culture magazine Voir. Natalia Hero is a writer and translator based in Montreal. Her short fiction has been published in Mag, Shabby Doll House, Cosmonauts Avenue and The Temz Review. Her debut novel, Hum, was published in 2018. Small Ceremonies by Kyle Edwards In the city of Winnipeg, two Indigenous boys are on the cusp of adulthood, imagining a future filled with possibility and greatness. Small Ceremonies follows a hockey team of Ojibway high schoolers from Winnipeg, who are chasing hockey dreams and coming of age in a game — and a place — that can be both beautiful and brutal. Kyle Edwards is an award-winning Anishinaabe journalist and writer from the Lake Manitoba First Nation and a member of the Ebb and Flow First Nation. He has won two National Magazine Awards in Canada and he was recognized as an Emerging Indigenous Journalist by the Canadian Association of Journalists. He is currently a Provost Fellow at the University of Southern California, where he is pursuing a PhD in creative writing and literature. Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid Atmosphere is thrilling from the start, when readers learn there's been an explosion on a space shuttle. Bouncing back and forth in time, the novel shares the journey of Joan, an astronaut in the 1980s, as she becomes the voice of mission control on that fateful day — and what's at stake, both personally and professionally, when things don't go as planned. Spent by Alison Bechdel In Spent, a cartoonist named Alison Bechdel grapples with her complicated relationship with capitalism, community and activism after the success of her memoir and its subsequent TV adaptation. American cartoonist Alison Bechdel is the creator of the comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For and graphic memoirs Fun Home, Are You My Mother? and The Secret to Superhuman Strength. The World So Wide by Zilla Jones The World So Wide tells the story of Felicity Alexander, a mixed-race opera star, who spends her life chasing love and validation and finds herself caught up in the military coup during the 1983 Grenada revolution and is placed under house arrest. What unfolds next is a saga that spans decades and reflects on race, love, belonging and revolution. Zilla Jones is a Winnipeg author and has been a finalist for the CBC Short Story Prize on four occasions, and the CBC Nonfiction Prize in 2024. She's also won many literary awards including the Journey Prize, the Malahat Review Open Season Award, the Jacob Zilber Prize for Short Fiction and the FreeFall short fiction award. The Passenger Seat by Vijay Khurana The Passenger Seat tells the story high school friends Teddy and Adam. Not yet men, but no longer boys, they set off on a road trip in search of freedom and self-discovery. But the further they go, the more lost they become, until they head down a road from which there's no coming back. Vijay Khurana is an Australian writer and translator based in Germany. His stories have been published in The Guardian, the Diane Williams-edited journal NOON and 3:AM Magazine. The Passenger Seat is his debut novel. One Golden Summer is a follow-up to Carley Fortune's debut book Every Summer After and tells the story of Alice, a photographer seeking a quiet, restorative summer at her childhood cottage with her grandmother. But her plans for peace are upended when Charlie — charming, flirtatious, and impossible to ignore — unexpectedly reappears. Soon, Alice finds herself feeling like she's 17 again, questioning whether this summer might hold something more than she ever expected. The Emperor of Gladness by Ocean Vuong In The Emperor of Gladness, Hai, a 19-year-old fast food worker in America, forms a found family with his co-workers and an elderly woman. They're considered to be on the margins of society, but find comfort in each other through their shared sense of ostracization by the world around them and their desire for companionship. Ocean Vuong is a Vietnamese American poet, essayist and novelist. He has received numerous awards, including the 2014 Ruth Lilly/Sargent Rosenberg Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation, a 2016 Whiting Award, the 2017 T.S. Eliot Prize, the American Book Award and a MacArthur Genius Grant. His previous works include On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous and Time Is a Mother. Everything Is Fine Here by Iryn Tushabe In Everything Is Fine Here, a younger sister navigates the challenges of family and societal pressures while offering love and support to her older sister, who is gay, in a country with strict anti-homosexuality laws. Iryn Tushabe is a Ugandan Canadian writer and journalist based in Regina. Her writing has appeared in Briarpatch Magazine, Adda, Grain Magazine, The Walrus and CBC Saskatchewan, among others. She won the City of Regina writing award in both 2020 and 2024, and was a finalist for the Caine Prize for African Writing in 2021. In 2023, she won the Writers' Trust McClelland & Stewart Journey Prize. Tushabe was longlisted for the CBC Nonfiction Prize in 2016. Julie Chan is Dead by Liann Zhang In Julie Chan is Dead, Julie Chan and her identical twin sister, Chloe VanHuusen, are polar opposites and barely communicate after being separated at a young age. But when Chloe, a popular influencer, mysteriously dies, Julie steps in to take her place and is thrust into a glamorous world with millions of followers. However, she quickly learns that Chloe's seemingly flawless life was far from it, and as she uncovers the sinister cause behind her death, it casts Julie as the next target. Liann Zhang is a second-generation Chinese Canadian writer who was a former skincare content creator. She holds a psychology and criminology degree from the University of Toronto and splits her time between Vancouver and Toronto. Julie Chan is Dead is Zhang's debut novel. The Dream Hotel by Laila Lalami In The Dream Hotel, a device that's supposed to help people sleep also harvests data about their dreams. This becomes one way that the government decides if someone's likely to commit a crime. When Sara, the novel's protagonist, is flagged as high risk, she's sent to a retention centre with other women trying to prove their innocence — and fight for their freedom. Laila Lalami is the writer of books including The Moor's Account, which won the American Book Award and the Arab-American Book Award, and The Other Americans, which won the Simpson/Joyce Carol Oates Prize. Her work also appears in Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, The Nation, Harper's, The Guardian and The New York Times. She lives in Los Angeles. Open, Heaven by Seán Hewitt In Open, Heaven, James has just come out to his family and community and is feeling shut down, isolated and filled with yearning. Then, he falls hard for Luke, who's handsome, unpredictable and a little older. As time goes on, the two boys grow closer and transform each other's lives. But because James can't control his all-consuming crush and ensuing fear of rejection, the line between reality and fiction begins to blur and he must decide whether to risk everything in his life for the possibility of love. Seán Hewitt is an assistant professor of English at Trinity College Dublin. His poetry collection, T ongues of Fire, won the Laurel Prize in 2021, and his memoir, All Down Darkness Wide, won the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Nobody Asked for This by Georgia Toews In Nobody Asked for This, 23-year-old Virginia juggles the challenges of grief, supporting her depressed friend and caring for her bereaved stepdad, all while dreaming of a successful comedy career. But when her stepdad decides to sell the family home and a date goes horribly wrong, she faces experiences so painstaking, that even coping with humour doesn't help. Dream Count by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Dream Count is a sweeping novel that weaves the perspectives of four women, moving between Nigeria, Guinea and the United States. Chiamaka is a travel journalist longing to be known. Zikora is her best friend, a lawyer, who's reeling from a major betrayal. Omelogor is Chia's cousin, outspoken, bold and brave, working in finance in Nigeria. Kadiatou is Chia's maid, building a life for her and her daughter in America, when she faces the unimaginable. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is the bestselling author of novels Purple Hibiscus, Half of A Yellow Sun, which won the Orange Broadband Prize, and Americanah, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction. Her nonfiction writing includes the manifesto We Should All Be Feminists, which was sampled in Beyoncé's song Flawless and inspired a t-shirt from Dior. She received a MacArthur Fellowship and divides her time between the U.S. and Nigeria. We, the Kindling by Otoniya J. Okot Bitek We, the Kindling weaves together stories of women who were abducted as children by a rebel militia in northern Uganda. Through the writing, each powerful voice tells a haunting story of loss, survival, friendship and what it means to hold on to hope, no matter how small. Otoniya J. Okot Bitek, a poet and scholar born in Kenya to Ugandan parents, currently lives in Kingston, Ont. Her first collection of poetry, 100 Days won the 2017 IndieFab Book of the Year Award for poetry and the 2017 Glenna Lushei Prize for African Poetry. Her second poetry collection, A is for Acholi, won the 2023 Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize, and her latest collection is Song & Dread. She was also longlisted for the 2018 CBC Poetry Prize. We, the Kindling is her debut novel. The Paris Express by Emma Donoghue The Paris Express provides a vivid account of late 19th-century France, exploring the fears and desires of the time through a group of passengers — diverse in their social class, age and occupation, aboard the Granville-Paris express. The fascinating stories of the passengers, including a young boy traveling solo, a pregnant woman on the run, a medical student and the devoted railway workers, are woven around the central, suspenseful plot of a young anarchist on a mission. But this is no ordinary journey … the story unfolds on the day of the infamous 1895 French railway disaster. Whistle by Linwood Barclay In Whistle, Annie moves to a charming town in upstate New York with her young son. She's reeling from the sudden death of her husband in an accident, and the fact that one of the children's books she authored and illustrated ignited a major scandal. When her son, Charlie, finds an old train set in a locked shed on their property, he's thrilled, but there's something eerie about the toy. As weird things start happening in the neighbourhood, Annie can't help but feel that she's walked out of one nightmare and right into another. Linwood Barclay is a New York Times bestselling author who has written more than 20 books, including thrillers I Will Ruin You, Find You First, Broken Promise and Elevator Pitch and the middle-grade novels Escape and Chase. Many of Barclay's books have been optioned for film and television, and he wrote the screenplay for the movie Never Saw It Coming, adapted from his novel of the same name. The Toronto author championed the memoir Jennie's Boy by Wayne Johnston on Canada Reads 2025. Body Friend by Katherine Brabon In Body Friend, the protagonist meets two different young women — Frida and Sylvia. Not only do they look just like her, but they also move like her. It turns out, all three women are living with a chronic illness and are in pain. But when it comes to dealing with their illnesses and pain, Frida and Sylvia seem to be polar opposites. Our unnamed protagonist is caught in the middle. Through the novel, we watch her try to find the best way to manage her body, her mind and the effects of her illness on who she is. Picks & Shovels by Cory Doctorow Picks & Shovels is the third book in the crime series about Martin Hench, which examines the early days of the personal computer and the possibilities for both exciting innovation and dangerous fraud it presented. Picks & Shovels takes us back to the 1980s, the start of Hench's career as a forensic accountant in Silicon Valley, where he exposes the finance crimes and shady dealings of tech bros. In this novel, Hench teams up with three brilliant young women to take down a pyramid scheme masquerading as a computer company. Cory Doctorow is a Toronto-born author, activist and journalist living in Los Angeles. His work, spanning non-fiction, fiction, and adult, YA and childhood audiences, has seen him inducted into the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame and earned him the Sir Arthur Clarke Imagination in Service to Society Award for lifetime achievement. His book Radicalized was a 2020 Canada Reads contender, defended by Akil Augustine. A Different Hurricane by H. Nigel Thomas A Different Hurricane, is set on the Caribbean island of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines and in Montreal. It's about two young men, Gordon and Allen, who become secret lovers until 1960s society forces them apart. After returning home from studying in Canada, Gordon's wife's journal threatens to expose his affair — putting his and Allen's lives in danger — and they must do everything in their power to keep it under wraps. H. Nigel Thomas is a Montreal-based Vincentian Canadian writer. He is the author of 13 books that span the genres of fiction, poetry and literary criticism. He has won many awards, including the Canada Council for the Arts Molson Prize in 2022, the Jackie Robinson Professional of the Year Award, the l'Université Laval's Hommage aux créateurs Award and the Black Theatre Workshop's Martin Luther King Jr. Achievement Award. Say Hello to My Little Friend by Jennine Capó Crucet In Say Hello to My Little Friend, Pitbull-impersonator Izzy Reyes receives a cease-and-desist letter from the iconic rapper's legal team. Living in his aunt's garage, he yearns for money, respect and a girlfriend — and launches himself on a quest to become a modern-day version of Scarface drug lord Tony Montana. But when these attempts lead him to the Miami Seaquarium tank of orca Lolita, he reckons with forces of nature and the truth behind his arrival story from Cuba. Born to Cuban parents, Jennine Capó Crucet is the writer of Make Your Home Among Strangers, which won the International Latino Book Award, How to Leave Hialeah, which won the Iowa Short Fiction Prize and the John Gardner Book Award, and My Time Among the Whites: Notes from an Unfinished Education, which was longlisted for the PEN/Open Book Award. Say Hello to My Little Friend won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Capó Crucet is currently based in North Carolina. We Could Be Rats by Emily Austin In We Could Be Rats, Margit has always found it difficult to understand her sister Sigrid, who rejected the conventional path of life, never graduating high school, and preferring instead to roam the streets with her best friend Greta. When Margit, for the first time, tries to reconnect with her sister, she uncovers the heartwrenching reasons behind her sister's choices. Emily Austin is a writer based in Ottawa who studied English literature and library science at Western University. She is also the author of the novels Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead and Interesting Facts About Space, and the poetry collection Gay Girl Prayers. The Death of the Author by Nnedi Okorafor Death of the Author tells the story of Zelu, a Nigerian American writer whose breakout sci-fi novel catapults her to literary fame and commercial success — but also becomes distorted in the way she hoped people would understand it. Nnedi Okorafor is a Nebula and Hugo award-winning writer based in Arizona. Her books include the Binti trilogy, Who Fears Death and Lagoon, which is currently in development to be a movie. The Riveter by Jack Wang The Riveter follows a Chinese Canadian man named Josiah Chang who is a soldier during the Second World War. Buoyed by his love for Poppy, a singer who works with him in the shipyard, Josiah is determined to survive the battlefields and make it back home — but finds himself fighting injustice on all fronts. Jack Wang is a N.Y.-based writer and professor originally from Vancouver. He teaches in the department of writing at Ithaca College and his writing has appeared in publications such as Joyland Magazine, The New Quarterly and Fiddlehead. Wang's debut short story collection, We Two Alone was longlisted for Canada Reads in 2022, shortlisted for the Kobo Emerging Writer Prize and won the Danuta Gleed Literary Award. Hum by Helen Phillips Hum is a speculative fiction novel about May, a mother in the near future, who's struggling to provide for her family in a world that's gripped by climate change and overrun by technology. When she's presented with a solution, to be a guinea pig in a new face-altering surgery for a big payday, she goes for it. But the reward comes at a steep price — and she'll have to trust technology to save her family. Helen Phillips is the Brooklyn author of six books including novel The Need, which was nominated for the National Book Award, and short story collection Some Possible Solutions, which won the John Gardner Fiction Book Award. A professor at Brooklyn College, she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers' Award. I Might Be in Trouble by Daniel Aleman I Might Be in Trouble follows struggling author David, reeling from his second book flopping after the resounding success of his first. His boyfriend has dumped him and he's fresh out of ideas for his third novel. Desperate to find redemption and some inspiration, David goes on a date with a promising stranger. After a wild night out in New York, David wakes to discover his date dead in bed next to him and the fact that he might have been responsible. In an attempt to uncover just what happened the night before, David teams up with his literary agent, Stacey, on a mission to figure out exactly what went on and maybe turn the disaster into inspiration for David's next book. Daniel Aleman is a Toronto-based author and writer originally from Mexico City. His debut novel, Indivisible, was released in 2021 and his second novel, Brighter than the Sun in 2023. Indivisible was a recipient of the 2022 Tomás Rivera Book Award. The Life Cycle of the Common Octopus by Emma Knight In The Life Cycle of the Common Octopus, Pen arrives at the University of Edinburgh, set on uncovering what her divorced parents in Canada have hid from her. Not only does she start to uncover the truth about them during a weekend visit to a famous writer, an old friend of her father's, Pen also experiences the many pangs of adulthood for the first time — including falling in love. Emma Knight is an author, journalist and entrepreneur based in Toronto. Her work has appeared in Literary Hub, Vogue, The Globe and Mail, The Walrus and The New York Times. She co-hosted and created the podcast Fanfare and co-founded the organic beverage company Greenhouse. She is the author of cookbooks How to Eat with One Hand and The Greenhouse Cookbook. Entitlement by Rumaan Alam Entitlement tells the story of Brooke, a woman in her thirties who gets a new job helping an elderly billionaire who wants to give away large parts of his fortune before he dies. This proximity to wealth is dizzying and intoxicating — yet it pushes Brooke closer and closer to madness. Rumaan Alam is the Brooklyn author of the novel Leave the World Behind, which was a finalist for the National Book Award and was adapted into a major movie. His other books include novels Rich and Pretty and That Kind of Mother and his writing has appeared in The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and The New Yorker. Scott Pilgrim's Precious Little Life by Bryan Lee O'Malley The Scott Pilgrim series is about an unemployed 23-year-old Torontonian, the titular character, who's going through a breakup. But when he falls for the enigmatic Ramona Flowers, he must face off against her seven evil exes in order to continue their relationship. Scott Pilgrim's Precious Little Life is the first book in the series. Bryan Lee O'Malley's career in comics took off after publishing Scott Pilgrim's Precious Little Life, the first in a Toronto-centric series about an indie music-loving nerd who must defeat his girlfriend Ramona's seven evil exes. The bestselling books later became a film starring Michael Cera, Mary Elizabeth Winstead and Brie Larson. O'Malley followed up this success with the acclaimed graphic novel Seconds and another series called Snot Girl with Leslie Hung. The Mistletoe Mystery is a holiday novella featuring Molly the Maid from Nita Prose's earlier books. When Molly and her boyfriend are part of a secret Santa exchange that makes her question her relationship, she's thrown into solving her most personal mystery yet. Nita Prose's novella features The Maid characters with a Christmas twist Prose is a Toronto author and editor. She was formerly the Canadian vice president and editorial director for publishing company Simon & Schuster. Her books include The Maid and The Mystery Guest. LISTEN | Nita Prose's mystery with a Christmas twist: Bookends with Mattea RoachNita Prose: The Maid series returns with a Christmas twist Final Cut by Charles Burns In Final Cut, childhood friends Brian and Jimmy set out to create a sci-fi horror movie using an old eight-millimetre camera. With Laurie as Brian's muse, they trek to a remote cabin in the mountains and Brian struggles with finding the balance between his dreams and reality. Why Charles Burns keeps returning to teenage angst in his graphic novels Charles Burns is an American cartoonist. His graphic novel Black Hole won Eisner, Harvey and Ignatz awards. He is the cover artist for The Believer and has made covers for Time, The New Yorker and The New York Times Sunday Magazine. LISTEN | Charles Burns returns to teengage angst in his graphic novel: Bookends with Mattea RoachCharles Burns: Why the comics icon keeps returning to teenage angst All You Can Kill by Pasha Malla All You Can Kill is an absurdist story set at a wellness resort that specializes in solving couples' martial issues with erotic therapy. But the main characters of the novel — an unnamed narrator and a woman named K. Sohail — are not a couple — which incites humorous, yet uncomfortable moments. As horror and surrealism seeps into the narrative, All You Can Kill reminds us how strange people can be. Pasha Malla parodies a wellness resort with horror and humour in new novel Pasha Malla is the author of several books of poetry and fiction including The Withdrawal Method, which was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Prize and longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, People Park, which was shortlisted for the Amazon First Novel Award, and Kill the Mall. Originally from Newfoundland, he now lives in Ontario and has taught at York University, University of Toronto, the University of Guelph, Brock University and McMaster University. LISTEN | Parodying a wellness resort with horror and humour: Bookends with Mattea RoachPasha Malla: Parodying a wellness resort with horror and humour Blackheart Man by Nalo Hopkinson Blackheart Man is a fantasy novel about the magical island of Chynchin. It follows Veycosi who is training as a griot (historian and musician) and is hoping to score a spot on Chynchin's Colloquium of scholars. Blackheart Man explores themes of Black self-actualization and empowerment within a world of African and Caribbean-inspired history, myth, fantasy and magic. Nalo Hopkinson weaves Caribbean folklore and dialect into her latest fantasy novel Blackheart Man Nalo Hopkinson is the author of many novels and short stories including Brown Girl in the Ring, which won the Warner Aspect First Novel Contest and was defended on Canada Reads in 2008 by Jemeni. Her other books include Sister Mine, Midnight Robber, The Chaos, The New Moon's Arms and Skin Folk. In 2021, she won the Damon Knight Grand Master award, a lifetime achievement award for science fiction. Blackheart Man is shortlisted for the 2025 Sunburst Award for Excellence in Canadian Literature of the Fantastic. LISTEN | Nalo Hopkinson weaves Caribbean folklore in her latest novel: Bookends with Mattea RoachNalo Hopkinson: How Caribbean folktales inspired her fantastical novel, Blackheart Man Peggy by Rebecca Godfrey, with Leslie Jamison Peggy tells the story of Peggy Guggenheim from her early beginnings in New York as the daughter of two Jewish dynasties to her adventures in the European art world. Throughout the novel, she is forced to balance her loyalty to her family and her desire to break free from conventions and live her own original life. How Leslie Jamison helped realize her friend's final dream — and brought the story of Peggy Guggenheim to life Rebecca Godfrey was an author and journalist known for her books The Torn Skirt, which was a finalist for the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize, and the true crime story Under the Bridge, which was adapted into a Disney+ series. She grew up in Canada but lived in upstate New York. Peggy is her final novel, completed by Leslie Jamison after she died. Leslie Jamison is the Brooklyn-based author of essay collections The Empathy Exams, The Recovering, the novel The Gin Closet and the memoir Splinters. She won the 2025 Weston International Award for her body of nonfiction work. LISTEN | Capturing Peggy Guggenheim in fiction: Bookends with Mattea RoachLeslie Jamison: Capturing Peggy Guggenheim in fiction and honouring a friend's dream The Blue Hour by Paula Hawkins At the Tate Modern in London sits a unique sculpture by the famous artist Vanessa Chapman. It's made up of all kinds of materials — wood, ceramic, wire, gold leaf, deer bone — all enclosed in a glass box. But when a forensic anthropologist happens upon the piece, he's convinced that the bone in the sculpture is actually human, sending the exhibit's curator into a frenzy. The thrilling mystery of the bone — and the dark look into the art world that surrounds it — is the story told in The Blue Hour. The Girl on the Train author Paula Hawkins turns to the mysterious art world in latest thriller Paula Hawkins is the London-based writer of the novels Into the Water and The Girl on the Train. The Girl on the Train sold 23 million copies worldwide and was adapted into a film starring Emily Blunt. LISTEN | Paula Hawkins explores the dark side of the art world: Bookends with Mattea RoachPaula Hawkins: Exploring the dark side of the art world in new thriller The Blue Hour Curiosities by Anne Fleming Curiosities is a novel that centres around an amateur historian who discovers an obscure memoir from 1600s England that explores a love that could not be explained in those times. Weaving together different fictional accounts, the novel tells the life stories of Joan and Thomasina, the only two survivors of a village ravaged by the plague, and how they eventually find each other again — Thomasina, now Tom, navigating the world in boy's clothes and as a male — and the struggles they face when they're discovered, naked, by a member of the clergy. Anne Fleming's novel Curiosities transports readers to the plagues, witch hunts and love stories of the 1600s Anne Fleming is an author based in Victoria, B.C. Her books include Pool-Hopping and Other Stories, which was shortlisted for the Governor General's Literary Award for Fiction and the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize, and her middle-grade novel, The Goat, which was a Junior Library Guild and White Ravens selection. Curiosities was shortlisted for the 2024 Giller Prize and longlisted for the Carol Shields Prize for Fiction. LISTEN | Anne Fleming chats with Mattea Roach: Bookends with Mattea RoachAnne Fleming: Why her latest novel is a gender-bending tale of witchcraft and forbidden love What I Know About You by Éric Chacour, translated by Pablo Strauss In What I Know About You, Tarek is on the right path: he'll be a doctor like his father, marry and have children. But when he falls for his patient's son, Ali, his life is turned upside-down as he realizes his sexuality against a backdrop of political turmoil in 1960s Cairo. In the 2000s, Tarek is now a doctor in Montreal. When someone begins to write to him and about him, the past that he's been trying to forget comes back to haunt him. Éric Chacour's debut novel is an ode to the power of queer love — even when it's forbidden Éric Chacour is a Montreal-based writer who was born to Egyptian parents and grew up between France and Quebec. In addition to writing, he works in the financial sector. What I Know About You is his first book and was a bestseller in its French edition, winning many awards including the Prix Femina. What I Know About You was on the shortlist for the 2024 Giller Prize and the 2024 Atwood Gibson Writers' Trust Fiction Prize. Pablo Strauss has translated 12 works of fiction, several graphic novels and one screenplay. He was a finalist for the Governor General's Literary Award for translation for The Country Will Bring Us No Peace, Synapses and The Longest Year. His translation of Le plongeur by Stephane Larue called The Dishwasher won the 2020 Amazon First Novel Award. He lives in Quebec City. LISTEN | Éric Chacou r on Bookends with Mattea Roach: Bookends with Mattea RoachEric Chacour: Exploring the power of familial expectations and forbidden love Creation Lake by Rachel Kushner Creation Lake tells the story of Sadie, an undercover agent tasked with sabotaging a young group of activists. But as the writings of a radical thinker named Bruno start to infiltrate her mind, Sadie starts to rethink her choices and the consequences of her transient life. Rachel Kushner's Creation Lake revolves around an anti-hero spy poised to take down an eco-commune Rachel Kushner is an American writer. Her previous work consists of the novels The Mars Room, The Flamethrowers and Telex From Cuba, the short story collection The Strange Case of Rachel K and the essay collection The Hard Crowd. She has won the Prix Médicis and has been a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Folio Prize, the Booker Prize and the National Book Award in Fiction. Creation Lake was nominated for the 2024 Booker Prize. LISTEN | An agent provocateur faces deep questions about how to live: Bookends with Mattea RoachRachel Kushner: In Booker Prize finalist Creation Lake, an agent provocateur faces deep questions about how to live Our Evenings by Alan Hollinghurst Our Evenings tells the story of Dave Win, the son of a white British dressmaker and a Burmese father he's never met, from his time growing up in small-town England in the 1960s to the COVID-19 lockdown of 2020. Alan Hollinghurst explores identity and political change in his latest novel, Our Evenings Alan Hollinghurst is a British author of the novels The Swimming-Pool Library, The Spell and The Line of Beauty, which won the 2004 Booker Prize. Hollinghurst also won the Somerset Maugham Award, the E. M. Forster Award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction. He lives in London. LISTEN | Coming of age in Britain and writing through the gay gaze: Bookends with Mattea RoachAlan Hollinghurst: Coming of age in Britain and writing through the gay gaze Hi, It's Me by Fawn Parker In Hi, It's Me, Fawn returns home after her mother's death. But the old farmhouse is also inhabited by four other women with interesting and strange beliefs. As she lives in her mother's room and tries to figure out what to do with her possessions, she becomes obsessed with archiving her mother's writing and documents, teaching her more and more about the woman she thought she knew so well. Fawn Parker blends her own grief with fiction in her novel Hi, It's Me Fawn Parker is an author and current PhD student at the University of New Brunswick. Her novel What We Both Know was longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize in 2022. Her poetry collection Soft Inheritance won the Fiddlehead Poetry Book Prize. Hi, It's Me was nominated for the 2024 Atwood Gibson Writers' Trust Fiction Prize. LISTEN | Fawn Parker on blending her grief with fiction: Bookends with Mattea RoachFawn Parker: Blending her own grief with fiction in new novel Hi, It's Me Cicada Summer by Erica McKeen In Cicada Summer, Husha, a woman quarantining with her grandfather and her ex-lover at a remote lakeside cabin, mourns her mother's recent death. While cleaning, Husha discovers a strange short story collection, the last message left by her mother. As the stories, teeming with unsettling imagery, begin to seep into the cloistered life at the cabin, the inhabitants must each reckon with loss, longing and what it means to truly know someone. Erica McKeen uses horror and surrealism to examine complicated grief and the tensions of providing care Erica McKeen is a writer living in Vancouver. Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, longlisted for the Guernica Prize and shortlisted for The Malahat Review Open Season Awards. Her first novel, Tear, won the 2023 Rakuten Kobo Emerging Writer Prizes for literary fiction. Cicada Summer was longlisted for the Carol Shields Prize for Fiction. LISTEN | Erica McKeen uses horror and surrealism to explore grief, care and love: Bookends with Mattea RoachErica McKeen: Using horror and surrealism to explore grief, care and love in new novel Cicada Summer Absolution by Jeff VanderMeer Absolution, the final instalment of Jeff VanderMeer's Southern Reach series, explores the conditions that may have contributed to the formation of Area X, including government complicity and scientific experimentation. It includes an account of the very first expedition into Area X, which is surrounded by an invisible border on a coastline that's referred to as the Forgotten Coast. How Jeff VanderMeer's Southern Reach series reflects our own relationship with the changing environment VanderMeer is an American author based in Tallahassee, Florida. His bestselling Southern Reach series includes four books: Annihilation, Authority, Acceptance and Absolution. Annihilation won the Nebula Award and the Shirley Jackson Award. His other work includes Hummingbird Salamander, Dead Astronauts, Borne and The Strange Bird. His reporting has appeared in Current Affairs, TIME, the Nation and Esquire. LISTEN | Jeff VanderMeer on reflecting our fight against climate change in his writing: Bookends with Mattea RoachJeff VanderMeer: How his blockbuster Southern Reach series reflects our own fight against climate change Brotherless Night by V.V. Ganeshananthan Brotherless Night follows the story of 16-year-old Sashi in 1981 Jaffna, Sri Lanka. Sashi, an aspiring doctor, wants to do something to help her brothers and friends who are swept up in the violence of the civil war. She decides to work as a medic for the Tamil Tigers, a militant group who are fighting for self-determination for Sri Lanka's Tamil minority. But when the Tigers kill a beloved teacher and Indian peacekeepers show up and only incite more the violence, Sashi begins to question what she stands for and accepts a dangerous opportunity to document human rights violations. V.V. Ganeshananthan explores the complexity of Sri Lanka's civil war in her prize-winning novel V.V. Ganeshananthan is an American writer and journalist of Ilankai Tamil descent. She served as the vice president of the South Asian Journalists Association, on the board of the Asian American Writers' Workshop and is a current board member for the American Institute for Sri Lankan Studies and the Minnesota Prison Writing Workshop. She teaches at the University of Minnesota and co-host a podcast called Fiction/Non/Fiction. Her first novel, Love Marriage, was longlisted for the Women's Prize. Brotherless Night won the U.K. Women's Prize and the Carol Shields Prize for Fiction. LISTEN | V.V. Ganeshananthan on her novel Brotherless Night: Bookends with Mattea RoachV.V. Ganeshananthan: Exploring the complexity of Sri Lanka's civil war in her prize-winning novel, Brotherless Night Bad Land by Corinna Chong In Bad Land, Regina's brother shows up on her doorstep with his six-year-old daughter after seven years away, interrupting her quiet loner life. The longer they stay, the clearer it becomes to Regina that something terrible has happened. Once the secret is revealed, they're sent on a fraught journey from Alberta to the coast of B.C. Corinna Chong confronts truth and the strange landscapes of the Alberta Badlands in her fiction Originally from Calgary, Corinna Chong lives in Kelowna, B.C. and teaches English and fine arts at Okanagan College. She published her first novel, Belinda's Rings, in 2013. In 2023, she published the short story collection The Whole Animal which includes Kids in Kindergarten, the winner of the 2021 CBC Short Story Prize. LISTEN | Corinna Chong on her debut novel Bad Land: Bookends with Mattea RoachCorinna Chong: Uncovering long buried truths against the backdrop of Alberta's Badlands The Life Impossible by Matt Haig In The Life Impossible, retired math teacher Grace Winters is left a house in Ibiza by a long lost friend. Feeling unfulfilled in her life, she books a one-way ticket to Ibiza, determined to figure out why she was left this property — and what happened to her friend, who died under mysterious circumstances. Featuring Matt Haig's trademark magic realism, dark humour, complex characters and optimism, The Life Impossible is a tale of a woman rediscovering the beauty of life and fighting for a better world. Matt Haig's novel The Life Impossible features a surprise inheritance, a magical island and cautious hope Haig is a British author of fiction, nonfiction and kids' books, but is perhaps best known for his novel The Midnight Library — which became popular on TikTok during the pandemic — and for his candid memoir, Reasons to Stay Alive, about his struggles with depression. LISTEN | Matt Haig on hope in fiction and life: Bookends with Mattea RoachMatt Haig: A surprise inheritance, a magical island and why he's embracing hope — in fiction and life The Pairing by Casey McQuiston The Pairing tells the story of Kit and Theo, two exes with a long history of love and friendship. They accidentally end up on the same European food and wine tour after not seeing each other for four years. Trapped together at some of the most romantic places in the world, Kit and Theo jump headlong into a friendly European hookup competition to get their mind off their ever-present chemistry. Casey McQuiston's latest novel The Pairing is a sexy European adventure that celebrates queer love Casey McQuiston is the author of Red, White & Royal Blue, One Last Stop and I Kissed Shara Wheeler. Their work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post and Bon Appetit. They were born and raised in Louisiana but currently live in New York City. LISTEN | Casey McQuiston on the future of the romance genre: Bookends with Mattea RoachCasey McQuiston: Celebrating queer love and joy and navigating the future of romance The Anthropologists by Ayşegül Savaş The Anthropologists centres on a young immigrant couple in an unnamed city navigating friendships, the guilt of being away from family and the search for an apartment. Ayşegül Savaş captures the era of being an 'irresponsible grown-up' in her latest novel Ayşegül Savaş is a Paris-based, Turkish novelist and short story writer. Her other works include novels White on White and Walking on the Ceiling and the nonfiction book The Wilderness. Her short stories are published in the New Yorker. LISTEN | Ayşegül Savaş on writing a book where nothing really happens: Bookends with Mattea RoachAysegul Savas: Finding home in foreignness and capturing the uncertainty of early adulthood Oil People by David Huebert Oil People tells the story of 13-year-old Jade Armbruster in 1987, who is living on the family's deteriorating oil farm, as her parents decide what to do about the land and their business. Jade's teenage experiences are juxtaposed with the 1862 story of Clyde Armbruster, who built the oil farm, and the rivalry he develops with his neighbours. David Huebert explores complexity of our relationship with oil in novel Oil People David Huebert is a Halifax-based writer who has won the CBC Short Story Prize and The Walrus Poetry Prize. He is the author of short story collections Peninsula Sinking, which won a Dartmouth Book Award and was a runner-up for the Danuta Gleed Literary Award, and Chemical Valley, which won the Alistair MacLeod Short Fiction Prize. LISTEN | David Huebert on family secrets and the history of oil in Ontario: Bookends with Mattea RoachDavid Huebert: Exploring the complexity of our relationship with oil through fiction The Capital of Dreams by Heather O'Neill The Capital of Dreams is a dark fairytale set in a small European country during a period of war. Fourteen-year-old Sofia is the daughter of the revered writer, Clara Bottom. When their country is invaded, Clara bundles Sofia onto the last train evacuating children out of the city. Clara gives her daughter her latest manuscript to smuggle to safety. When the children's train stops in the middle of the forest, Sofia senses they are in danger. She manages to escape, but loses her mother's beloved manuscript. Soon Sofia finds herself alone in a country at war on an epic journey to find all that she has lost. Heather O'Neill on how motherhood and artistry intersect in her life and writing Heather O'Neill is a novelist, short story writer and essayist from Montreal. She won Canada Reads 2024, championing The Future by Catherine Leroux, translated by Susan Ouriou. O'Neill is the first person to win Canada Reads as both an author and a contender. Her debut novel Lullabies for Little Criminals won Canada Reads 2007 when it was defended by musician John K. Samson. LISTEN | Heather O'Neill on crafting fairy tales: Bookends with Mattea RoachHeather O'Neill: How motherhood and artistry intersect in the bestselling writer's life and work Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar Martyr! follows a 20-something Iranian American poet named Cyrus in his early years of sobriety. When he becomes fascinated with the stories of historical martyrs, he finds himself on his way to interview a terminally ill artist in Brooklyn — a journey and conversation that changes the course of his life. Kaveh Akbar's search for meaning in sobriety led to writing his bestselling novel, Martyr! Kaveh Akbar is an Iranian American writer. His poems have appeared in publications including The New Yorker and The Paris Review. His previous books include Pilgrim Bell and Calling a Wolf a Wolf. LISTEN | Kaveh Akbar discusses Martyr! on Bookends: Bookends with Mattea RoachKaveh Akbar: Finding meaning in sobriety and writing his bestseller, Martyr!
CBC
04-06-2025
- Entertainment
- CBC
How characters from Alison Bechdel's past shook her out of her memoir-writing kick
Nearly 20 years after her breakout memoir, Fun Home, American cartoonist Alison Bechdel is still unearthing new truths about that period of her life. But this time, she's taking a look at her personal story through fiction, with her new comic novel, Spent. In Spent, she explores the life of a cartoonist, also named Alison Bechdel, who grapples with her complicated relationship with capitalism, community and activism after the success of her memoir and its subsequent TV adaptation. "When I was younger, I did lead a more communal life," Bechdel said on Bookends with Mattea Roach. "I lived in a communal house. I went out and did political activities and was involved in my community. Over time, I really stopped doing that — and it's a bunch of factors. Part of it's getting older, part of it is being in a relationship, but a big part of it was that I was living very much on the edge until I was in my 40s, until Fun Home came out, and slowly saved my financial bacon." "Then I started making a lot of money, which was a very weird experience for someone who had formed their sense of self as an outsider and especially as a poor outsider." Bechdel, who is also known for her comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For and books Are You My Mother? and The Secret to Superhuman Strength, joined Roach to revisit her debut memoir and how it shaped her return to fiction. Mattea Roach: You published your memoir, Fun Home, almost 20 years ago when you were 45. Now you're in your 60s. How has your relationship with the text evolved over the past nearly two decades? Alison Bechdel: It's funny to have this thing, this record of my life that is unchanging, like it's cast in stone. Even though I have found out lots of interesting information about various people or scenes in the book that would change the story if I were to write it now, it's done. This is the record and it's very odd to have to be constantly talking about it. The book was published almost 20 years ago, but I'm still talking about it as if it's a new thing to people. So that's a funny activity to get one's head around. How did it come about that you learned new information about some of the stuff that's depicted in the book? Was it a situation where people you knew read the book and said that's not actually how it was? I'll tell you one example of that, which is that I learned from my mother's best friend, that on the day that my father died, she had decided to not divorce him. Wow. Your dad died when he was hit by a truck and that was two weeks after your mom had asked for a divorce. And then there's some significant suggestion that it might have actually been intentional on his part. In this tumultuous time around between when I came out to my parents and when he died, which was just a couple of months, my mother had asked him for a divorce. And now I find out that she had been going to call that off. It just just casts her whole story into this really different light. It was already quite a tragic story, but now it's even worse, you know? Fun Home was made into this Broadway musical in 2015 and it won five Tonys. It's a very different work despite being adapted from your memoir. How did it feel to hand over a project that was so personal to be adopted for another medium? I didn't really know what I was doing. I knew I had sort of sidestepped an offer to option it for a film by asking for more money than they were willing to pay me. Which was a great relief. But then this offer came up for a musical and I didn't really have a connection to musicals. I've seen musicals, but I'm not like a big musical person. Somehow it seemed like it was different enough that I wouldn't mind if someone made a really bad musical out of my book — and the way that I would mind if it were a really bad film adaptation. I don't know what I was thinking now, but fortunately, that didn't happen. The people who made it did a very good job. It's a really good adaptation, but I always sort of think, "Wow, that was lucky." In my new book Spent, I explore what it would be like to really lose control of a creative project. Why did you want to explore this alternate path that you're grateful, in your real life, to not have gone down? Well, partly because once you become a writer in this world, everyone expects you to then somehow do something for TV or the great triumph is to get your book turned into a TV show and that just always strikes me as funny. Why can't we just make comic books that are comic books? I guess, obviously, because you make more money, but it's also just a cultural phenomenon. You know that if you're a writer, you have to grapple with this. Why did you want to revisit these characters from your weekly comic strips Dykes to Watch Out For who are now in late middle-age but are still living together in a communal housing situation? This book, Spent, was going to be another memoir. That's what I started doing after my comic strip. I retired the comic strip and began writing books about my life. And I thought that's what I was going to do forever because I really liked writing about actual life. Occasionally, someone would ask me, do you ever think you'll do fiction again? And I would just go blank. Fiction? How do you do that? And I couldn't even remember that I had actually done this fictional comic strip. But I realized early on in the work for this book that doing it as a memoir was going to be really boring. I just somehow didn't want to write about my actual life or actually read Marx or all the things I would have to do to intelligently discuss money or capitalism. In the moment that I threw that idea away, this other idea came in. What would really be funny is if I wrote about a cartoonist named Alison Bechdel who was trying to write a book about money and then it just all sort of sprang to life — and in that new vision, there were my old comic strip characters who were going to be my friends. It just was one of those lovely moments when something just comes into your mind fully formed, which hardly ever happens to me.
Globe and Mail
30-05-2025
- General
- Globe and Mail
Alberta Insider: New fronts in the culture wars
Good morning. Alberta is no stranger to some of the culture wars that have been fought in the United States and abroad in recent years. This week, two new fronts were opened in the province. First, on Monday, the Alberta government announced plans to hold public consultations so it can set new regulations for school libraries, creating rules around books that the province deems age-inappropriate because of what it qualifies as sexually explicit content. 'School libraries spark imagination and foster a lifelong love of learning within our children,' Education Minister Demetrios Nicolaides told reporters in Calgary. 'Yet, unfortunately, through investigations conducted by my office, we have found books in K-12 schools that show extremely age-inappropriate content.' The province said it found 'multiple books with explicit sexual content' as part of an investigation conducted by Nicolaides's office. Only four examples were provided on Monday, each of which are graphic novels and depict LGBTQ or coming-of-age subjects: Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe, Fun Home by Alison Bechdel, Blankets by Craig Thompson and Flamer by Mike Curato. The Globe's Temur Durrani reached out to the four authors, who all said they were not consulted after their books were flagged and that the content is being taken out of context. Thompson, an Oregon-based graphic novelist, said his book is a coming-of-age autobiography based on his own childhood in an evangelical Christian family. Curato, a Massachusetts-based illustrator, also defended his work. 'Protecting the right to read is protecting the right to exist,' he told The Globe. The issue of determining what books are age appropriate has led to numerous political disputes and legal challenges. The fight reached the U.S. Supreme Court last month, when a children's picture book by a Vancouver Island author about a puppy at a Pride parade was among several works at the centre of a court challenge over whether parents have the constitutional right to opt their children out of lessons involving works with LGBTQ characters. Alberta's new policies, when implemented, will apply to public, separate, francophone, charter and independent schools. The second battle of the week came on Wednesday, when the Canadian Medical Association filed a constitutional challenge alongside three Alberta doctors against the province's legislation that limits access to medical treatment for transgender youth. The CMA says it is compelled to step in to guard the relationship between patients, doctors and families in making treatment decisions. Alberta's Bill 26, which became law last December, prohibits doctors from prescribing puberty blockers and hormone therapies for those under 16. It also bans doctors from performing gender-reassignment surgeries on minors (those under 18) – an already rare occurrence in the province. CMA president Joss Reimer said the law has created a 'moral crisis' for physicians, saying an 'ideological influence' does not help the patient. 'When governments get involved and start restricting medical decisions, that means that doctors are then put into a position where they have to choose between following their ethical standards, following what they feel is best for their patients or following the law,' Dr. Reimer told The Globe. At the time of the filing, the Alberta government had not commented on the CMA's legal challenge. The United Conservative government has previously declined to comment on legal action launched against the bill last year by advocacy groups Egale Canada and Skipping Stone Foundation, citing it was before the courts. This is the weekly Alberta newsletter written by Alberta Bureau Chief Mark Iype. If you're reading this on the web, or it was forwarded to you from someone else, you can sign up for it and all Globe newsletters here.
The Guardian
28-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Spent by Alison Bechdel review – the graphic novelist faces up to midlife
Alison Bechdel emerged in the 1980s with Dykes to Watch Out For, a groundbreaking weekly strip that featured a group of mostly lesbian friends. Since then, her acclaimed graphic novels have focused mainly on herself and her family. Fun Home in 2006 (exploring her closeted, funeral-director father's suicide and her coming out) was followed by Are You My Mother? (psychoanalysis and her relationship with her mother) and The Secret to Superhuman Strength (her compulsive exercising, from karate and crunches to snowshoeing). These three erudite, pensive and observant works spend most of their time looking back. Where the modern Bechdel is present, she is mostly sketching, editing and narrating her past, and contemplating how everyone from Jack Kerouac and Virginia Woolf to paediatrician Donald Winnicott can help her shed light on it. In Spent, by contrast, we meet an Alison Bechdel who lives largely in the present. She writes and draws in rural Vermont, campaigns for progressive causes and hangs out with her friends and her wife, Holly. Yet this book-Alison is not quite the real Bechdel. In Spent, Alison's father was a taxidermist, not a mortician; Bechdel's two brothers have been replaced by a Maga-loving sister. In our world, Fun Home has been made into a Tony-winning musical and is being (slowly) developed into a movie starring Jake Gyllenhaal. The equivalent in Spent is Death and Taxidermy, a graphic memoir whose very loose TV adaptation (dragons and cannibalism feature, alongside Aubrey Plaza and Benedict Cumberbatch) is on to its third season. The book-Alison has mixed feelings about its success, but the royalties help fund the pygmy goat sanctuary she runs with Holly, and give her the leeway to prevaricate as she plans a new work: $um, an accounting of money and her life, with a little help from Karl Marx. Progress is slow: headlines about Trump's first term blare from her device screens, the goats are grabbing every opportunity to breed, Holly is increasingly keen to film everything for her social feeds and Covid has the world in its grip. America is atomised, with 'a zillion streaming options with six people tuned into each of them', Alison says. 'No wonder the country's a mess.' Yet Spent is anything but a book about a writer's lonely lot. Alison's liberal community bustles with gossip and life. There are vets to befriend, new neighbours to meet, anticolonial Thanksgiving dinners to attend and speeches to give against book banning. Just down the road, her friends Ginger, Lois, Sparrow and Stuart share a house, this quartet – in another metafictional twist – having wandered over from the panels of Dykes to Watch Out For. Spent, then, feels less like a fictionalised autobiography and more a gathering of threads from Bechdel's life and work, a celebration of and a rumination on where she has landed in late middle age, and how some of her fictional creations might live alongside her. That doesn't mean first-time readers won't enjoy it. Bechdel's acutely observant line drawings – here enriched with warm colour by the real-life Holly – lend themselves wonderfully to the alternately comfortable, intimate and awkward interactions of her cast as they gather around tamari-roasted turnips and fennel flambé to shoot the breeze. There's always been a spark to Bechdel's work, despite its often serious themes, and writing about herself from a greater fictional distance seems to have given her more room to have fun. Dramas and mishaps unspool with a lightly comic charm that belies the darkness in the world outside, from Alison's optimistic side-hustle (she pitches a reality TV show based on ethical living) to Sparrow and Stuart's experiment as a throuple with old friend Naomi (a vegan purple dildo is delivered with a wink by a FedEx driver). Yet it's longtime fans who will get the most from Spent. There's a real joy to seeing characters return, their shapes a little baggier, their hair greyer, but their spirits the same. If you've treasured sharing Bechdel's days spent hunched over her diary as a pale and anxious child, or cycling up the Adirondacks as a fitness-mad thirtysomething, it's poignant to meet an Alison whose fierce self-analysis has mellowed a little. There's a pathos, too, in seeing once-young radicals engage with a younger generation, in the form of Sparrow and Stuart's daughter JR, who has returned to Vermont after the collapse of her polycule. Spent isn't perfect. At times Alison's world, with its 'Shmetflix' and 'Schmamazon' and 'sage and sawdust' gluten-free stuffing, seems broad pastiche. There are stretches where you feel like you're watching comfortably off semi-retirees cosplaying as agricultural workers. Yet while Spent may lack some of the raw power of Bechdel's earlier work, this wise and playful tale has deep roots. On a flight back from pitching half-interested streaming networks about her reality TV show Alison soars over the 'intriguingly wrinkled landscape of the south-west', asks for a pencil and starts drawing over a TV script, the 'rasp of graphite on paper … opening the flat page into another dimension'. It's a neat epiphany and a lovely summary of the craft of comics, and it feels thoroughly earned. By the end of Spent, Alison has learned that she can't do everything, but that perhaps doing something – and being in the moment with people you love – is enough. It's an almost cosy conclusion, undercut by what we know but the book-Alison does not: that Trump will return, not long after her account has finished. Will Alison keep her newfound joie de vivre? I hope we get to find out. Spent: A Comic Novel by Alison Bechdel is published by Jonathan Cape (£20). To support the Guardian, order your copy at Delivery charges may apply.
New York Times
23-05-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Alison Bechdel Is Finally at Peace Mixing Fiction and Memoir
Alison Bechdel rose to fame as the creator of the long-running alt-weekly comic strip 'Dykes to Watch Out For,' then jumped to an even wider audience by way of her celebrated graphic memoirs 'Fun Home' and 'Are You My Mother?' Her new book, 'Spent,' is a graphic novel — but it was originally meant to be another memoir, as Bechdel tells Gilbert Cruz on this week's podcast. 'Over the years that I turned myself from being a comic strip writer into a memoirist, I got very sort of self-righteous about memoir as a genre,' Bechdel says. 'I just thought, why would you bother making anything up? Life is incredible. It's all right there. It's served up on a platter every day. Write about that. My friends who are fiction writers would say, You're able to tell a deeper kind of truth with fiction, don't you think? And I would agree with them, but secretly I would think, no, you can't. You've got to tell the actual truth. But that does get really tiresome. It gets tiring. Anyway, after a while, I started to see the merits of fiction — there's stuff you can do that you can't when you're trying to stick to absolute fact. So this was just a very fun, liberatory exercise. Honestly, I feel a little confused myself about what's true and what's not true in the book.' We would love to hear your thoughts about this episode, and about the Book Review's podcast in general. You can send them to books@
